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Chicago police Superintendent David Brown on Tuesday suggested that statewide stay-at-home orders were to blame for the city’s deadly Memorial Day weekend violence.
Chicago reported 10 homicides from Friday evening to early Tuesday morning -- more than the city has seen for the same holiday weekend of the last four years, according to data from the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times.
Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown responds to a question about the Memorial Day weekend violence during a news conference Tuesday, May 26, 2020, in Chicago. (AP)
“The stay-at-home order did little to prevent violence, particularly in parts of the West and South sides,” Brown said of the weekend’s violence. “These incidents primarily involved disputes between rival gang factions as well as clashes involving the sale of illegal drugs.”
Brown said police ordered around 300 dispersals to crowds each day of the Memorial Day weekend. At one large gathering where gunfire was heard, police made two arrests and seized two guns. Overall during the weekend, police took possession of a total of 216 firearms -- 68 more than officers recovered over the same period last year, Brown said.
Brown acknowledged a cutback in officers working overtime shifts to patrol the streets, but said they were “coordinated a little better.”
“This was a challenging weekend, but we are not shaken. We are not going to give up on our city. Our officers are brave, courageous, dedicated men and women who are risking their lives both with exposure to COVID and confronting violent offenders,” Brown said.
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In a news conference held later Tuesday, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot held Brown responsible for the weekend “bloodbath.”
“We have to do better. We cannot have weekends in the summer turn into a bloodbath. And this weekend’s violence was out of control,” she said. “While I know that there was a lot of energy and coordination among a variety of groups, what I said to the superintendent this morning is, ‘This was a fail. Whatever the strategy is, it didn’t work.’”
She later acknowledged that law enforcement infrastructure such as courts, jails and prosecutors have been largely absent during the pandemic.
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“We have the jails that are effectively closed to new persons. So we have officers risking life and limb and arresting people who are absolute drivers of violence and they’re cycling in and out of the... court system in 24-to-48 hours,” the mayor said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
